Linnet and the Periwinkle Flyer
Lindsay Littleson
Tiny Tree Books

Linnet, in her early teens, has grown up in Mount St.Marys, a convent with a cruel regime in Yorkshire. She longs to escape, so she’s both happy and fearful when the announcement is made: she’s to leave the convent’s confines and take up a position with Mrs Periwinkle in Periwinkle’s Bazaar. Her first thought is that she’ll now be able to search for her lost friend, Dove.

Mrs Periwinkle seems a rather harsh person but she has another skill aside from her shop business: she is an inventor. One night awakened by hammering sounds, Linnet creeps into the yard and comes upon a large book wherein she sees what she assumes is her boss’s latest invention. Weeks later she revisits the yard and there finds Mrs periwinkle working on what the woman tells her is The Periwinkle Flyer, a machine she hopes to get patented and to Linnet’s surprise Mrs P. agrees to allow her to have a go on the invention.

That night, wondering what she’s let herself in for, Linnet has a dream in which she and the machine crash. Soon after, it’s time for what she’s certain is the machine’s test flight and sure enough, the flying machine and Linnet become airborne. Linnet finds the experience exciting and doesn’t want it to end but then she begins to lose control …

Is this the end of Linnet’s flying hopes? Happily not; instead it’s the beginning of an exciting new partnership. But then comes news of an outbreak of smallpox. That there is a link between Linnet’s role with Mrs Periwinkle and the terrible illness is revealed near the end of the adventure; an adventure that has strong, determined characters, inventiveness and nail-biting flying sequences, and at the heart of which is the importance of feeling part of a family.